James Talarico links capitalism to white supremacy, says oil ‘not gonna last’

James Talarico has to answer for comments he made in 2020 at the height of peak wokeness. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas has been flying under the radar lately, despite conservative media trying to brand him as James Talafreako . But the weakness of his opponent, Ken Paxton, a scandal-plagued Republican candidate , might be buying him some cover.

But CNN’s KFile has uncovered some extremely progressive comments he made during an interview with the Sierra Club several years ago, in which he thanked young far-left activists for calling attention to climate change and linked it with capitalism and white supremacy , and said all three things needed to be defeated.

Climate change, capitalism and white supremacy, he posits, are linked systems of oppression. This is woke nonsense. White supremacy is indeed a system of oppression, and one we ought to oppose and do oppose, but it is not linked to capitalism, which is a good system, not an oppressive one.

Climate change, on the other hand, is a bit of a mixed bag — we should work to mitigate the harms of emissions and pollution, but climate change is a consequence of beneficial human activity, technology, economic growth, etc. It is linked to capitalism in that it can be an undesirable by product. But capitalism, I must repeat, is not an oppressive system.

At least, not if we compare it to every other economic system that has ever existed. Before capitalism, oppression was rampant. Humans suffered terribly under feudalism, when the lord or the king had everything and the peasants barely scraped by. When capitalism came along, for the first time in human history, common people were able to accumulate enough wealth to dramatically raise their own standards of living, their life expectancy, enjoy leisure time, etc.

That’s the gift of capitalism: rising literacy rates, falling child mortality rates, and so on. It’s one of the best things mankind has ever invented.

Meanwhile, the competing economic system in modern times, socialism, delivers huge amounts of oppression, and also poverty, wherever it is tried. If Talarico were being honest, he would tell these left-wing lunatics that their own preferred vision for the world is the one inexorably linked to oppression.

In that same discussion, Talarico also told the Sierra Club that oil is “not going to last” and said the state’s investment in the oil industry was a mistake, because it’s a bubble waiting to burst. I wonder how those comments sit with Texans.

They don’t face an enviable task, I know, because Paxton does have problems of his own. Is Talarico really a moderate Democrat, though? Or is he a very progressive woke Democrat who was learned in the last six years to keep quiet about what he really thinks and pretend to be another moderate Democrat? We need to know, does Talarico still believe that oil is bad and capitalism is inevitably linked to white supremacy? Because if so, he has no business representing Texas in the U.S. Senate.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.